Culprit

In the final part of our series on Amelia Dyer, we’ll see how the infamous baby farmer changed her business practices bytaking in both unwanted babies and older children, killing them via strangulation, and disposing of their bodies herself. Using a variety of aliases, Amelia may have killed hundreds of young victims. Although it was the discovery of Helena Fry’s body in 1896 that led to the polic...

With the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 having essentially lifted any financial obligation from the father, single mothers in Victorian England often turned to baby farmers. These agents would put their babies up for fostering or adoption for a fee. While some truly helped the children that came into their care, others realized that murder was the best way to maximize their profits. One such baby...

Nurse Kristen Gilbert was smart. After all, she graduated high school at 16. Kristen also liked control and being the center of attention. She liked the praise she received from co-workers. She really was the best nurse, just ask her. When Kristen started an affair with a co-worker, telling him how good she was at her job wasn’t enough, she needed to show him. This need would lead to at least four...

We’re back with part two of our theme on female killer nurses with Jeanine Hannah, a.k.a. Jeannie Miata and Julie Kocian. With her many names, Jeanine managed to continue caring for elderly patients in spite of a restriction and a prior conviction of theft in the first degree. However, stealing from patients was far from her worst crime. After she absconded from Oregon, Jeanine faced charges of th...

* We’re back with improved audio quality! * After a burglar alarm was activated at the Gattis home around 11:30 PM on November 23, 2017, police found the bodies of two women inside the kitchen along with the body of a man in the front yard. All three had been shot to death by the sole person still alive on the property: Christopher Gattis. Christopher had just gunned down his wife, Jeanett Gattis,...

* Just a note that the audio quality isn’t ideal in certain sections. We’re hoping to get a new piece of equipment for our next episode to fix the issue. Thanks for your understanding! * What do a church elder, Ashley Madison, and the dark web have to do with the murder of Amy Allwine, a well-loved dog trainer, active church member, and wife and mother in Cottage Grove, Minnesota? Well, it’s alway...

On the morning of December 26, 1997, Nick Hacheney left his home in Bremerton, Washington, to go on a duck hunting trip. Just after 7:00 that morning, one of the neighbors noticed smoke billowing from the nearby home. After firefighters made quick work of the blaze, the severely burned body of Nick’s wife, 28-year-old Dawn Hacheney, was discovered. The newly widowed Nick was the youth pastor of Ch...

In the early evening of July 29, 2008, officers with the Mobile County Police Department entered traveling preacher Anthony Hopkins’ home on Rylands Street through the unlocked back door. The house was quiet and exceptionally tidy. Officers made their way through the home until they stopped in front of a door leading to the utility room. They opened the door and were met with the unmistakable smel...

Around 9:30 p.m. on November 1, 1994, Rabbi Fred Neulander walked into the living room of his Cherry Hill, New Jersey home and discovered his wife, 52-year-old Carol Neulander, lying on the floor. She was badly injured, and the ground around her was covered with blood. Fred called 911, but the woman with whom he had three children wouldn’t live to celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary in only e...

A distraught Tracy Burleson called 911 a little before 11 p.m. on May 18, 2010, crying and repeating, “Someone shot my wife.” Tracy had just returned from a quick trip to the convenience store and found his wife in the driveway of their home with a gunshot wound to the back of her head. Who would shoot Paulette Burleson, the 56-year-old wife of the pastor of one of the oldest churches in Houston?...

On April 8, 2006, Pastor Matt Baker called 911 after discovering his wife, Kari, lying unconscious in the couple’sbedroom. EMS providers and firefighters raced to her side, but Kari was already gone. Once police told a McLennan County Justice of the Peace about finding a container of the sleep aid Unisom beside a typed suicide note on the bedsidetable, he ruled Kari’s manner of death a suicide. Ho...

Around 6 PM on August 5, 2002, Pastor Michael Tabb arrived home with his two-year-old. He noticed the front door was slightly open but entered anyway. He called out for his wife, Marla, but there was no answer. He found the badly bludgeoned body of his wife clad in pajamas on their bedroom floor. Police would later note that the crime did notseem to be a robbery gone horrifyingly wrong. Nothing wa...

When Rosemarie Cobb went to Reeders, Pennsylvania for her brother’s memorial service in October 2008, she had no idea that his suicide was tied to a man linked to two other deaths, a pastor who happened to be having an affair with her sister-in-law. After pushing for an investigation, the formerly closed cases were given a second look. His first wife, Jewel, had died after a fall down the stairs n...

When a family member chooses a residential facility or nursing home for their loved one, they expect them to be safe. When they are able to visit their relatives often, they feel confident that they chose the right place. However, without safeguards in place to advise potential employers of someone’s alarming job history and amid a global pandemic and staff shortages, the perfect situation is set...

In 1887, Amelia Phinney was recovering from surgery at Cambridge Hospital. As she lay awake from the postoperative pain, a nurse named Jane Toppan gave her something that thankfully made her pain ebb away, but then Amelia felt the bed sink as someone got in beside her. However, after another nurse came by, Jane jumped out of Amelia’s bed. Once the effects of the nearly fatal drugs Jane had given h...

With her spotty employment history and her nursing license free from infractions, because her Demerol theft hadn’t yetbeen investigated, Kimberly Saenz was unconcerned and optimistic about her new job at the Lufkin, Texas DaVita Dialysis Center. Eight months in, her training was complete, and she was finding her groove. That’s when things started to change. In April 2008, five patients would die a...

In February 1991, 22-year-old Beverley Allitt started her first job as a children’s nurse at Lincolnshire’s Grantham and Kesteven Hospital. After less than a week in her new role, 7-week-old Liam Taylor was being treated on the children’s ward for a chest infection. He recovered from two respiratory emergencies, but his luck ran out when he was on his own with Beverley. Even though the attending t...

Working at Bexar County Medical Hospital in the pediatric ICU with the sickest children was where LVN Genene Jones wanted to be. She found the life-and-death emergencies exciting and wanted to be by the bedside of the sickest children. Colleagues who first viewed her as wanting to do a job that not every nurse was comfortable with soon started asking questions: Why were so many children dying duri...

We’re starting our next true crime theme: female killer nurses. Between 2007 and 2016, Ontario nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer killed eight elderly patients and tried to kill or harm six more, administering insulin overdoses to those with dementia to relieve the “red surge” of pressure she felt in her chest. Elizabeth had a habit of stealing and using medication on the job and had been fired twice befo...

On March 31, 1995, Grammy-award winning Selena Quintanilla was about to finally get her hands on the remaining financial records in the possession of her former employee who had been recently fired for embezzling. But that employee, the founder of Selena’s fan club, was not about to let the object of her obsession cut her out of her life. At the Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas, 34-year-old Yolan...

On December 8, 1980, one of the most famous and prolific musicians of a generation, John Lennon, 40, was gunned down in front of the Dakota building, which housed his Upper West Side apartment in the adopted city that he loved, where he could walk around freely without getting bombarded by fans. However, one mentally unstable anddisillusioned fan, Mark David Chapman, 25, who had been planning John...

It was a typical meet and greet, and the former contestant of The Voice, Christina Grimmie, stretched out her arms to hug a shy fan. But Kevin James Loibl didn’t return her embrace. Instead, he reached for his first 9mm handgun and shot his “soul mate,” a woman he had never met but with whom he had become obsessed, four times. Despite Christina’s brother tackling Kevin, Kevin scrambled away, took...

Days before wrapping up their tour to head home for the Christmas holidays, the band Damageplan was playing a show at the Alrosa Villa Nightclub in Columbus, Ohio. However, this would be the last show for “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott and three other people. Nathan Gale went on a shooting spree that would send ripples through the heavy metal music community by ending the life of one of metal’s most inf...

Against the backdrop of Colombian narco-soccer, Medellín’s Atlético Nacional qualified for the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Having lost only one of the twenty-six games they played in the lead-up to the World Cup, the team was helping Colombian fans forget the perils they faced during the tumultuous time following Pablo Escobar’s death. But after being eliminated during the group stage, so...

We’re starting our new true crime theme: when celebrity fandom turns to murder. Rebecca Schaeffer was a 21-year-old actress whose career was just starting to take off. On the morning of her murder, she was anxiously waiting for a messenger to deliver the script for the highly anticipated third and final Godfather movie which she would be auditioning for later that afternoon. She opened her apartme...